Have Appetite, Will Travel

There have of late been a slew of food books coming off the press. Some will win you over with mouth-watering photographs on glossy paper, others with recipes galore, and still others with prose as delicious as the food it describes. I guess Claude Tayag’s "Food Tour: A Culinary Journal" classifies under the last category, and throw in recipes too and some nifty illustrations by the man who wrote the book and ate his way through it as well.

Tayag writes a weekly column in the Lifestyle section of The Philippine STAR, on what else but food. The book is actually a compilation of his columns, plus the illustrations as bonus.

Tayag is a multi-talented, multi-tasking person. He is writer, painter, furniture maker, cook, entrepreneur. He comes from pedigreed lineage—certified Kapampangan for all his culinary endeavors, and writer’s genes from his father, the late journalist Katoks Tayag. I still have to find out where the furniture making comes from.

Because the book is a compilation of columns, it gives a bit of everything. The author attempts to organize the parts into a cohesive whole, and came up with four main headings—Food Musings, Food Ways, Food Fest, and Food Joints—by way of chaptering. This may or may not help the reader in going through the 67 essays in the book, but it really doesn’t matter, for each piece can and should be read on and for its own merits. And when taken together, it’s quite a buffet—eat all you can, and no leftovers please!

You have to be Pinoy to fully appreciate the punches and the punchlines; I’m not sure anyone, anywhere else in the world would smile at—or even ever understand—"Ki Ip Si." But all that is gravy; even without the Pinoy-isms this is quite a culinary adventure, with some misadventures thrown in to spice things up.

From bagnet in Ilocos to kadios in Iloilo to palapa in Marawi, Tayag travels the length and breadth of the archipelago, with the ubiquitous presence of his darleng, wife Mary Ann, who seems to be in every dish, every spoonful, certainly every single chapter and page. He won her over with Hainanese chicken rice; she won him over by wolfing the whole thing down, "with lots of chili and gusto." Enough said.

As a nod to the adage that food knows no boundaries (or maybe I’m just making that one up), there is a section on "Asia and Beyond," with four essays on Thai food (chronicling his trips to Bangkok), one each on China and Hong Kong, and one on Paris (well, sort of).

People on a diet should not read this book; on second thought, people on a diet MUST read this book, to disabuse themselves of the notion that eating is bad—unless, of course, you have a medical certificate that orders you to be on a diet, in which case you should go on and read "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking or Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s "One Hundred Years of Solitude" instead.

People who do not cook—and do not intend to learn how to cook or even try—can read this as an adventure book, vicariously visiting places you would probably never set foot in, and getting to know people you would never otherwise meet.

Those who do cook—or want to learn how to or try—will have the added pleasure of trying out the many recipes that accompany the essays. The recipes should be spot on, as Tayag is a good—very good— cook, and he doesn’t keep secrets. At any rate, if what you cook does not turn out to be as good as he describes, you can e-mail him since he does give his e-mail address at the back of the book.

The joy not just of eating but of discovery is palpable in every line and page of this book. Tayag approaches each journey, each situation, each new place, as he would each plate or bowl or banana leaf set before him: with gusto. As he so aptly writes, "All you need is the right attitude and some creativity."

And a good appetite.

Food Tour: A Culinary Journal is available at National Book Store and Powerbooks.